


Dimetor, Eleutherios.

by Cymbidia



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon Era, Enjolras makes a move, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Get Together, Gratuitous Classical Epithets from both of them, Healing, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Barricade, Romance, Scars, Surprisingly light lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28171233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cymbidia/pseuds/Cymbidia
Summary: August 1832:Two months after the fall of the barricade, Enjolras pays Grantaire a visit.Grantaire looked at the silver line tracing across Enjolras' cheekbone, occupying almost the exact same spot as his own new facial trophy. The mark on Enjolras was shallow and unobtrusive. It was thin as a hair. A sharp edged pamphlet thrown with sufficient velocity could probably have left a worse scratch."Golden ideal, marred," said Grantaire mournfully. "A stain upon the Republic herself. It cannot be borne, not by a fervent devotee of the revolution such as I."Enjolras glared daggers into him. "I have come here to tell you that I don't care about your facial disfigurement and that you ought to come back. Stop mocking me."Grantaire ignored him, floating on the euphoria of wine and Enjolras. He reached up and touched the thin, milky line on Enjolras' cheek.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 92





	Dimetor, Eleutherios.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a)the endless brazen epithets that fanon has Grantaire call Enjolras to his face and b) the fact that the brick compares Enjolras to both Aristogeiton and Harmodius. Mostly brick-adjacent, but honestly can be any canon.  
> Dimetor - Twice-born. Eleutherios - Liberator. Both are epithets of Dionysus.  
> Harmodius and Aristogeiton were a pair of famous lovers known as the Tyrannicides.  
> Marsyas was a satyr who challenged Apollo to a contest of music and was turned into a wineskin for his hubris. Also known for being a symbol of speaking truth to power. Satyrs have big erect dicks.  
> This fic doesn't really go into how E and R survived, but it's based on the assumption that Grantaire did the "Permets tu?" song and dance but they pulled off a miraculous escape from the firing squad, and that's where their injuries come from. In my head the Corinthe was slightly on fire and a beam fell and brained the firing squad.

Grantaire was at his lodgings, consuming, as was his habit, yet another bottle of vile cheap wine. The Corinthe was not yet recovered from the events of June and the Musain was now placed under suspicion, and he had not so much motivation within him as to seek out another haunt. So, here he was, the saddest of wretches, drinking alone in his rooms.

He threw himself onto his bed, a lumpy but comfortable affair littered with too many pillows and covered in linens that were beginning to slip off the mattress. Grantaire was not a still sleeper, and neither was he otherwise meek in bed. He supposed he could allow his linens to be changed, but that would necessitate getting up. He wriggled into the pile of fluff and down, and buried himself face down. The wine splashed a little out of the bottle, but the trickle landed more on his hand than his sheets, which was a blessing.

He moaned piteously.

The bayonet slice on his left arm was mostly recovered, and the disgusting mass of bruised and cracked ribs had largely receded to a barely noticeable twinge. An ugly furrow of blood scab and scar tissue gouged a deep trench across his cheek. He was lucky it was a graze wound, and he was lucky to be alive. That it rendered him difficult to look at was nothing. He had always been ugly. So what if the gargoyle should have some weathering!

He moaned again, even more pitifully.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Grantaire supposed it was his neighbouring lodger, a horrid little Dutch fellow named Van Beek, with the most ludicrous tendency to thunder up and down the stairs at the crack of dawn so that he might go out and paint the sunrise. Grantaire, who was a drunk and a libertine, was usually just abed by that time, and so regularly wanted to wring the man's neck. Awake as he was in these bright noon hours, Grantaire still couldn't summon any patience for the man.

Surprisingly, Van Beek did not tromp into his own quarters but burst through Grantaire's door. Grantaire moaned again, as if he was an actor practicing at rending hearts.

"Van Beek," he said into a musty floral pillow overstuffed with down. "How many times must I-"

"Grantaire," a voice said. It was not Van Beek.

Grantaire froze, clutching his bottle tight. His knuckles went perfectly marble white.

"Grantaire, I know you are awake, stop ignoring me." The voice said, as impatient as always when it came to Grantaire. Grantaire resisted the urge to moan again. He took an immensely deep breath, managed not to choke on a stray bit of fluff that had escaped the pillow's stuffing, and sat up. He turned to the door with an expression of ironic joviality.

"Phoebus Apollo!" Grantaire crowed. " What brings your rays upon my dark doors?" He sprang up, bowed, felt a sharp twinge in his ribs, and cursed as his breath caught and he had to straighten himself with much less obsequiousness.

"Grantaire," Enjolras repeated his name for the third time, a look of impatience upon his beautiful, tyrannical face. "Stop avoiding us."

"I have not been avoiding you, plural," Grantaire said with a look of supreme innocence. "I have been avoiding you, singular."

Enjolras' elegant brow furrowed. "Very well," he said, as if he had made a great concession by humouring Grantaire. "Stop avoiding me."

"No, pitiless Achilles," Grantaire said with all his store of tender feeling for Enjolras, which ran very deep. "I shan't." He threw himself upon his bed again, and buried his face in the pile of pillows like a wine-stained ostrich.

"Look at me, Grantaire," Enjolras demanded. He strode up to Grantaire's bedside and began excavating Grantaire's head from the pillows.

"Shan't," repeated Grantaire, and attempted to bat away Enjolras' advances with wine-sticky hands.

"Look - at - me!" Enjolras ground out as he heaved at Grantaire, who stubbornly tried to meld into the stuffing off his mattresses.

"I'm not a paving stone!" Grantaire cried, hands flung over his head as if he was protecting his skull from a bludgeoning. "It’s no use trying to uproot me for your barricade!"

"Grantaire! Stop being an ass and look at me!" Enjolras shouted, all his oratorical genius abandoned for savage hair pulling.

"Ow ow ow ow ow!" Grantaire complained, cowering and scrunched up like a hedgehog or a particularly curly haired shrimp. "Mercy! Mercy, your Radiance. You mistake me for your Hyacinthus, please spare me the head wound."

"Sit up and look me in the face," Enjolras compelled. His momentary temper was beginning to cool off. Like a shark smelling blood, Grantaire noticed this softening and took advantage. He jammed his head into a pillowcase, the pillow quite still inside it. Then, barely able to make out faint shapes through the thin pillowcase and ignoring the pressure of the stuffing against the now tender scalp on the back of his head, he leapt out of his bed and made for the window.

Enjolras tackled him with a cry, and both of them choked out pained groans as their two bodies collided.

"When I pictured wrestling with you," Grantaire began ruefully, and interrupted himself with a huff. Enjolras let out a soft grunt. "What are you doing here? Go back to bed. You should still be recovering."

"So should you, yet I see you have already returned to your most constant companion," said Enjolras, gesturing derisively at the spilt bottle creating a puddle on the floor.

"I was not the one who almost _died_ ," Grantaire retorted, feeling quite short, before he remembered himself and fell silent.

Enjolras took advantage of this moment of hesitation to push him back onto the bed. Straddling Grantaire's thighs and pressing down on his chest firmly with one hand, Enjolras ripped the pillowcase off Grantaire's head, as if unmasking a bandit or a villain.

Grantaire cringed and futilely tried to hide his face. As if by supernatural compulsion, he peeked through his fingers. He did not want to obey, but he was helpless. How could he not feast his eyes upon this sight that he had been starving himself of?

Enjolras was as golden as ever. His lashes fanned out pale and thick, his eyes blazed bright and blue. His lips were rosy with youth and passion. His skin was smoother and less wrinkled than the whites of a hard boiled egg. Though he was sickly pale with his long convalescence, two bright spots of delicate pink glazed the perfect planes of his cheekbones. It was August, yet this porcelain youth, this gold petalled beauty, looked still like a rose bud beginning to bloom in the spring. A pink rose perhaps, delicate and delicately coloured, with a faint tinge of green under his blushing beauty.

Like the bruised petal of a new bud, his perfectly sculpted face now bore an imperfection. It was so small as to be inconsequential, yet so glaring as to be entirely capable of ruining the unblemished perfection of this divinely wrought flower.

"That wasn't so bad," said Enjolras, trapping Grantaire's chin with his slender fingers and an iron grip.

Grantaire looked at the silver line tracing across Enjolras' cheekbone, occupying almost the exact same spot as his own new facial trophy. The mark on Enjolras was shallow and unobtrusive. It was thin as a hair. A sharp edged pamphlet thrown with sufficient velocity could probably have left a worse scratch.

"Golden ideal, marred," said Grantaire mournfully. "A stain upon the Republic herself. It cannot be borne, not by a fervent devotee of the revolution such as I."

Enjolras glared daggers into him. "I have come here to tell you that I don't care about your facial disfigurement and that you ought to come back. Stop mocking me."

Grantaire ignored him, floating on the euphoria of wine and Enjolras. He reached up and touched the thin, milky line on Enjolras' cheek. Enjolras flinched from the stickiness of his hand. Grantaire drew away, reminded of his place.

"So I have seen you," Grantaire said, twisting himself under Enjolras’ hands and between his slender strong legs and burying his face in the pile of pillows again. "May I now be excused?"

Wordlessly, the weight of Enjolras retreated from him. Grantaire relaxed, hurt and relieved.

Enjolras, however, seemed to not be content with only that. Grantaire heard the sound of water being poured into his washbasin, then splashing, and the wringing of cloth.

"Surely my touch is not quite that repulsive," he protested petulantly, and was ignored. He yelped when a cold wet hand grasped him by the wrist and began to scrub at his sticky fingers. Baffled, Grantaire twisted around and peeked at the frustrated but determined set of Enjolras' lips, the thin but strong fingers of his hand. Grantaire's ugly paw twitched in his grasp, even uglier when held against such contrasting perfection. Michaelangelo would have wept, had he ever managed to shape a hand so perfect out of marble. Pygmalion was nothing in the face of the divine artistry that sculpted Enjolras.

Enjolras made an irritated tutting noise and rolled up Grantaire's sleeve, then scraped at his wrist with the damp handkerchief. "Grantaire," he said, when he saw the gash of the bayonet on his arm, mostly scar, partly scab. "This needs to be kept bandaged!"

Grantaire jerked his arm away and hid it from Enjolras. "It's fine. _I'm_ fine. Go away, terrible Aristogeiton. Haven't you tyrants to kill?"

Enjolras made a noise, as if he had been hit. Grantaire knew the noise, having witnessed Enjolras being shot. Grantaire flinched, and curled up tighter. He pulled his blanket over his head, and prayed that Enjolras would leave.

"I'm not going away, Grantaire."

Grantaire said nothing.

"I don't care that you have a scar on your face," Enjolras said forcefully. "Not when you were wounded for the sake of the revolution! Not when you got shot to protect _me_!"

"Not well enough," Grantaire shouted. It was muffled by his pillows and blanket both. He ripped the blanket off his face and sat up. "Not well enough," he repeated.

With the hand cleaned by Enjolras, he reached out again and traced the scar on Enjolras' cheek.

Enjolras laughed softly. "I am hardly so vain," he said. "’Tis but a scratch."

Grantaire made a noise, and covered the small mark on Enjolras’ face with his palm. He could feel the barest hint of stubble on the jaw. The skin was velvet smooth and slightly cooler than expected. Grantaire did not dare to press hard enough to find out whether it would give like flesh or resist like marble. Or if it would shatter, like porcelain.

"Don't make me look at the proof of my sins," Grantaire said, attempting to keep the misery out of his voice.

"It is not as if I am a demoiselle whose chances of a good marriage has been ruined, Grantaire," Enjolras said exasperatedly, catching Grantaire's wrist and trapping his outstretched hand between both palms. His hands were soft and shapely, tender except for writers' calluses. "And you are hardly the one who despoiled me."

Grantaire swallowed down another whine. "How's your chest?" He croaked.

"Fine," Enjolras said shortly. "All healed."

Grantaire pressed Enjolras' shoulder tight with his free hand.

"May I see?" He said, knowing full well he was overstepping.

Enjolras looked at him for a long moment, the furrow returned to his brow. Then, he nodded, and began to unbutton his coat.

All the moisture evaporated out of Grantaire's mouth, and left his throat dry as the Sahara. "Would- would you per- _That is_ , would it be alright if-" he said, and allowed his finger to lightly graze the second button of the coat. Enjolras stilled, then dropped his hand to his sides.

"Go ahead," he said superfluously.

Grantaire's hands shook as he undid the buttons. Enjolras shrugged the sober black coat off and allowed it to drop to the floor. Then he stood there still as a statue as Grantaire repeated the process with his red waistcoat. Grantaire paused and swallowed before he dared to reach for the cravat. Enjolras stared with silent intensity, but said nothing.

The knot of the cravat came loose easily enough. It slithered down to the ground between nerveless fingers.

The collar of the shirt parted like an opening flower, and revealed a stretch of throat and chest that Grantaire had no right to. Without prompting or haste, Enjolras pulled the hems out of his trousers and pulled the shirt off over his head. He threw the shirt onto the pile with the coat and waistcoat, and stood with his arms down but slightly spread, presenting himself for inspection.

His chest was pockmarked with a spray of small gouges. Down one side from collarbone to rib was a long, straight burn scar. A patch of more irregular burns climbed up his forearm and faded out into his bicep. A thick silver line crawled horizontally across his abdomen just above the waist of his trousers. Three and a half inches from his heart was a neat scabbed crater from a bullet.

"All healed," Enjolras said practically, as if he was showing his workbook to a strict schoolmaster to prove that he had finished all his set tasks. Grantaire bit his lip and tried not to burst into tears.

"All healed," he echoed. It was a miracle Enjolras was alive.

"My injuries were superficial at most," Enjolras said, and began to dress. "Now come with me to see Combeferre, you should not be going without bandages yet."

It was strange, how a bullet that had pierced Enjolras could leave behind a wound that closed neatly and swiftly, yet the almost inconsequential bayonet gash on Grantaire's arm had nearly taken his life and was still not entirely scarred over.

"Don't want to," Grantaire muttered, clutching his arm to his chest. The danger had passed already. A hand clamped onto his shoulder with the strength of a vice.

"Come with me to Combeferre's," Enjolras repeated slowly, holding Grantaire's gaze.

Grantaire flinched and looked away. "As you wish, deadly Harmodius.” Enjolras smiled and finished buttoning his coat one-handed.

"Surely I cannot be _both_ Aristogeiton and Harmodius?" Enjolras rejoined with deliberate lightness, the clawing grip on Grantaire's shoulder not weakening in the slightest as he marched Grantaire out the door. "You have confused your metaphors, my dear friend."

Grantaire nearly fainted in the hallway from being addressed thus, but gathered his wits and replied, "An unfortunate pitfall of being peerless, inimitable Achilles."

"You tease me endlessly with comparisons to the Classical, but I did not sleep through my years at the lycée, my Patroclus." Enjolras said lightly.

Grantaire was amazed to find that he did not stumble in his steps, even as his brain shorted out and his vision went white for a moment.

" _Chief_ ," he said roughly. He did not know if he was frightened or angry

"Or is it loyal Pylades? You did yourself propose beautiful Hyacinthus," Enjolras continued, his tone airy yet somehow still as merciless as the death grip he had on Grantaire's shoulder.

"Marsyas, maybe." Grantaire repressed the urge to sob like an overwrought Romantic heroine. "On account of all the wine."

"I think I'd have noticed the tail and the ears, were you a satyr," Enjolras rebutted practically. Then he paused. "No, no. Don't say it. I left myself right open for that one," sighed he.

Grantaire, who had not been planning on voicing the obvious rejoinder, flushed and coughed.

"My hackney is waiting," Enjolras pivoted their direction and steered Grantaire out the door and towards the street. The portress, who stood gawping at them by the door, said nothing. She had the characteristic look of one who had been overpowered by Enjolras’ sheer radiance alone.

"I'm not going to make a run for it, I already agreed to come," Grantaire objected half-heartedly as he was pushed onwards. Enjolras gave him no quarter. Passing pedestrians gave them a wide berth.

"In the carriage, _Eleutherios_." Enjolras commanded, shovelling him inside the hackney before squeezing in himself. "Back from where I came," he added to the driver.

Grantaire hunched down and tried to spontaneously discover the power of teleportation. He had agreed to come, but he had not agreed to being so cruelly mocked.

"See how you like a taste of your own fawning, Liberator," Enjolras said cheerfully, content at last to relax and let his hand sit gently upon Grantaire's shoulder. Grantaire was trembling like a doe and about three seconds from crying out a declaration of love lurid enough to be chaff from a feuilleton. Or just crying. He was irrationally convinced that should he look, there would be a golden hand print seared into the skin of his shoulder, despite his perfectly respectable four layers of clothing.

"Is the metaphor not apt enough? Enjolras pressed intently, snaking his hand around Grantaire's neck and onto the other shoulder. He pulled and Grantaire was tugged to his side in a half-embrace. Mortified beyond belief, Grantaire attempted to flinch away, only to be trapped in place by Enjolras' implacable grip. "I think _you_ would be Aristogeiton," Enjolras said mercilessly. "Coming to my defence as you did. Return to us, I cannot become a tyrannicide alone."

Grantaire took a long moment to process this. 

He sat up, dislodging Enjolras' arm around his shoulders. "Are you _coming on_ to me?" He demanded in disbelief.

"Have been since I pinned you to your bed and let you take my clothes off, but thanks for noticing," Enjolras said wryly, a smirk alighting upon his boyish face. The arm reasserted itself around Grantaire’s waist. 

"You can't..." Grantaire scrabbled for the words to express how incompatible such an action was with the fundamental laws of physics and reality. "I'm not - you can't- _Enjolras_!"

The sheer incomprehensibility of Enjolras acknowledging the cur barking at his feet was already baffling enough. That he threw it a bone instead of kicking it or driving it off was beyond the pale. Grantaire felt vaguely nauseous.

"You crown me golden Achilles, yet wonder that I see Patroclus in my brother at arms! How cold you must think me, Grantaire."

"You are committed to Patria, and have no time for any other mistress." Grantaire prayed for fortitude from a god he had long ago stopped believing in. "you have said so yourself."

"Not for a _woman_ , no." Enjolras said patiently. "But unless you have been keeping something important from me..." He paused meaningfully. "Well, it is all the same to me, so long as it is you, Grantaire."

Grantaire let out a noise that might have come from a piglet being slowly flattened by an olive oil press. He looked out the window with a blush on his face, and said nothing, half because he didn't want Enjolras to have more confirmation that Grantaire was always a sure thing, half because he was afraid he would say something wrong and drive Enjolras off.

"I know you haven't got plans," Enjolras continued. "It is summer. We are all laying low. You were shut up in your own room getting drunk. Come with me after this. I am not going back to your lodgings until you have sheets without wine on them."

Grantaire sputtered with false outrage. "I- how presumptuous!" He was already beginning to calculate the best route - Enjolras lived only a few minutes’ walk from Combeferre.

"You have been undressing me with your eyes for years, I'm not that oblivious," Enjolras said. What a merciless despot, this spirit of the revolution. "But for today, I mean to have lunch at a cafe near mine, and perhaps to retreat to my rooms and sample a fine clairet that I liberated from Courfeyrac. You are always free to refuse, of course, but I hope you will permit me the pleasure of your company." He held out his hand.

Grantaire covered his face, then hissed and let his hands fall to his lap when he agitated the wound on his cheek. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing," he mumbled. Then, staring out the carriage window and studiously avoiding eye contact, he grasped Enjolras' outstretched hand.

The hackney slowed as they approached their destination. "It was the finest declaration of love and devotion I have ever received," Enjolras said, smiling like the schoolboy that he was. "Why _shouldn't_ I press my advantage?"

**Author's Note:**

> I can't deal with all the canon era death and sadness but I love canon era and prefer it but I CAN'T DEAL with it. Victor Hugo I WILL fistfight you.


End file.
